Retro Golden Age

Although I’m constantly playing games and have been for several decades now, I still have a few holes in my video game knowledge. One of them involves European computers from the 1980s and 1990s. While I was playing my Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis, millions of gamers across the pond were enjoying the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC, platforms that I have almost no experience with.

That’s why I was so excited to dive into the Retro Golden Age series from Zerouno Games. This is a cool new line of games that celebrates some of the great Spanish developers working with the Amstrad CPC, including titles as diverse as the burglar simulator Goody, run ‘n gun shooter Operation Alexandra and the adventure/platformer Livingstone, I Presume.

With each game sold separately, I decided that it would be a good idea to review each game one at a time. That said, there are a lot of features and options that carry over between the three entries in the Retro Golden Age line-up. For starters, all three games will allow you to save at any time, as well as rewind time to fix your past mistakes. You also have a number of video options, including making the screen full size and adding filters to make it look more “authentic” to the 1980s.

Unfortunately, the one thing the games don’t come with is any real information about the games. As somebody who has never played these three titles before (and has no experience at all with the Amstrad CPC), it sure would have been nice to get some sort of history lesson, even if it’s just a paragraph giving the games and platform some context.

That complaint aside, these Retro Golden Age releases have a lot going for them. Here are my thoughts on all three of the classic games.

The first Retro Golden Age release I played was Goody, and to say that I had a negative first reaction would be a real understatement. When I first loaded up this game about a burglar, I was immediately struck by how poorly it controlled, how easy it was to die and how completely out of my depth I felt. I worried that this was going to be my reaction to all three of these games, potentially pissing off a lot of European retro gamers.

With that weight on my shoulder, I pushed on. And I’m glad I did, because I learned some valuable lessons about what I should expect from all three of these Amstrad CPC titles. I had to throw out a lot of my pre-conceived notions about what a side-scrolling platformer should be and meet the game where it was. And while I’m not sure I would recommend this to people who don’t have nostalgia for Goody, I’m glad that I started here.

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Put simply, you play Juan Nelson Brainner Stravisnky, a former upper-crust gentleman who loses it all and turns to a life of crime. This is a comical adventure that sees him running, jumping and the avoiding the fuzz as he tries to pull off his latest get-rich quick scheme: A bank robbery. Of course, it’s not going to be that easy, as everything (including the moon) is trying to stop you.

The first thing you’ll notice about Goody is that it doesn’t simply give you one or two lives, but 15. That’s right, we start the game with 15 lives. And let me tell you, you’re going to need them. This is one of those games where everything can and will kill you. It’s common to die four or five times, simply because there’s a snake sitting on the respawn point. And it certainly doesn’t help that the weapon you throw barely gets the job done, since it never seems to go the direction you want. It all adds up to a challenging platformer where you’ll die over and over and over until you get it right.

That said, the more I played Goody, the more I enjoyed what it was trying to do. I appreciated that we weren’t playing through a bunch of levels, but rather interacting with a good-sized open world, with multiple interconnected paths. I liked that I could find and use burglary tools to get around the map in different ways, such as a ladder and bolt cutters. I also liked that you had to find out a lot of this on your own, with almost no hand-holding through what turned out to be a surprisingly complicated game. This is a game that expects you to poke at it and learn from your deaths until you know the right path and items you’ll need to pull off the heist, and that ended up being a satisfying experience when all was said and done.

Unfortunately, the frustrating gameplay and cheap deaths make it hard for me to recommend Goody to anybody who doesn’t already have nostalgia for this 35-year-old action game. Of the three Retro Golden Age releases, this is by far my least favorite.

Originally released back in 1986, Livingstone, I Presume is the oldest game featured in the Retro Golden Age series. But don’t take that to mean that it’s the most archaic, because this side-scrolling adventure game has a surprising amount of depth and sophistication for its time.

At first glance, Livingstone, I Presume looks like an unofficial sequel to Pitfall. But don’t let first appearances fool you, because there’s a lot more going on here than in Activision’s 8-bit classic. For starters, you play New York Herald journalist Henry Morton Stanley, the man tasked with surviving the dangers of Africa in an effort to track down the famous English missionary David Livingstone. This is, of course, based on real events, and there’s no question that Stanley’s adventure through Africa is a compelling starting point for a side-scrolling adventure game.

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One thing that I really like about Livingstone, I Presume is that it gives you the weapons and items right up front. From the very start, we’re able to cycle between four different accessories, each with their own purpose. There’s the pole vault (that will allow you to make impossible jumps), as well as knives, bombs and even a boomerang that will make it a lot easier to overcome the continent’s many obstacles and enemies.

As you might expect, we get the usual batch of baddies – ranging from members of the animal kingdom to man-eating plants. And speaking of enemies that love the taste of human flesh, you’ll also have to deal with cannibalistic tribes (complete with questionable racial stereotyping). And when you’re not running and pole-vaulting from danger, you’ll spend most of the time trying to get the platforming right.

Much like Goody, Livingstone, I Presume takes place in one large interconnected world. A lot of the game comes down to figuring out the right path and memorizing the enemy patterns. Once you have those down, you can beat this game is around ten minutes. It’s surprisingly short. Still, you’re going to see a lot in that ten-minutes, and finding the right path is going to take a lot of failed attempts.

While I kind of hate the pole-vaulting mechanic, I can appreciate that this game is at least trying something different. I also really like that we’re given all of the weapons and items right up front, allowing us to jump right into the action. Some of the elements have not aged particularly well, but, even as somebody who has no nostalgia for this game, I had no problem getting into the adventure. I give it a tepid recommendation.

Operation Alexandra is easily my favorite of the Retro Golden Age releases, and is the only one that I would whole-heartedly recommend. It’s also the newest, originally released as a homebrew CPC game from developer 4Mhz back in 2018. If you ever wanted to accuse me of falling prey to recency bias, here’s your opportunity.

Set in the mid-1970s, you play a Soviet soldier who unearths an old, World War II-era Nazi base in the Arctic Circle. What he finds there is both alarming and deadly, leading to an action-packed side-scrolling run ‘n gun shooter with a cool sci-fi story and great throwback graphics.

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I call it a run ‘n gun shooter, but this is no Contra. In a lot of ways, Operation Alexandra shares more in common with the Metroidvania genre than anything else. You explore a large open-world, picking up items and using them to open up new sections of the Nazi base. For example, you’ll need to find a gas tank in order to power the compound and open up the nearby door. This will force you to explore every part of the base for useful items and power-ups.

Much like the other games in the Retro Golden Age line, Operation Alexandra isn’t a long game. If you know what you’re doing, you can beat the game in less than twenty minutes. Maybe even a fraction of that. Of course, you have to know what you’re doing, and that’s going to require a lot of trial and error. Between exploring the base, solving all the puzzles and learning how to take out every type of enemy, you’ll be able this game for a few hours.

I think it’s fair to say that developer 4Mhz learned the lessons from the games of the past. Operation Alexadra keeps the interconnected world and high difficulty, but gets rid of the cheap deaths and frustrating gameplay. Yes, it still feels like a game that came out of the 1980s, but I never felt like I was actively fighting the control. It also looks phenomenal, with all kinds of small details and a genuinely eerie atmosphere.

While I’m sure some lifelong Amstrad fans will think it’s blasphemy to recommend the 2018 homebrew game over two genuine classics from the 1980s, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. With great gameplay, an engaging story and a genuinely cool Nazi base to explore, Operation Alexandra is the best thing to come out of the Retro Golden Age line of games.